William Morris's Grafton Wallpaper Explained

What Grafton shows: the pattern and its specimens

The V&A describes its Grafton specimens as a pattern of flowers and foliage. Two printed examples are held by the museum, under object numbers O248690 and O248688. Beyond that general description, the museum's records do not name individual plants in the pattern.

Both specimens carry practical information on their backs. The V&A records that each is inscribed in ink with the title, a number and the price, the kind of marking you would expect on samples kept for trade use.

The colour scheme of one example is recorded in detail: the V&A lists its second specimen as dark green, pale green and yellow on a pale ground. That gives a direct sense of how at least one version of the pattern was issued.

Dates, attribution and the pattern book

According to the V&A, Grafton was designed by William Morris, and the museum gives a production date of 1883, made in England. This attribution and date come from the museum's records for the specimens and the related drawing.

The two specimens belong to a Morris & Co. pattern book that the V&A calls 'Volume 2', registered as E.530-608-1919. The museum's own catalogue fields describe the contents inconsistently, giving different date ranges for the patterns it contains, a discrepancy the records themselves preserve.

A design date distinct from the 1883 production date is not established by the available records. The V&A gives production for 1883; no separate design or registration date for Grafton appears in the evidence for this page, so none is stated here.

How Grafton was printed

Grafton is a colour woodblock print on paper. According to the V&A, it was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., the same division of labour the firm used for much of its wallpaper output.

The printing was economical in structure. Three blocks were used to print Grafton, which was available both as a two colour pattern and as a three colour pattern. The smaller version simply dropped one of the three, which kept costs down for buyers.

The preliminary drawing

The V&A holds a preliminary drawing for Grafton under object number O251326. It is executed in watercolour and pencil on paper, squared in pencil, with watercolour outlines showing how the design joins in a repeat.

According to the V&A, the drawing was published by Morris & Co. The squaring and the outlines marking the repeat join make it the clearest documented record of how the pattern was worked out for block printing, since a design of this kind had to tile cleanly across the width of a roll.

What we cannot yet say about Grafton

Several things a researcher might want to know are not settled by the records available here. It is better to state them plainly than to fill the gaps with guesses.

The evidence for this page does not establish the following:

• Which specific plants Grafton depicts, beyond the V&A's description of flowers and foliage.
• A design date for Grafton separate from the 1883 production date given by the V&A.
• Any documented statement by William Morris about Grafton.
• Later reissues of the design, or holdings of Grafton in any museum other than the V&A.

If new records surface, several of these points could be resolved quickly, particularly the plant identification and the question of holdings elsewhere.

Seeing Grafton alongside Morris's other wallpapers

Grafton sits in a large body of printed patterns, and the Morris wallpaper list gathers them in one place if you want the full run of designs. Reading Grafton against its neighbours in the pattern books makes the two and three colour structure easier to see.

For comparison, more on Willow Bough shows another foliage led pattern, while our guide to Acanthus follows a large scale design from drawing to print. A closer look at Fruit covers a pattern often paired with others from the same period.